touchpad can't be re-enabled after disabled

[Steve Litt]

On Friday 04 September 2009 13:06:05 Boaz Rymland wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> I have a new laptop (Acer 5738 mentioned in a different thread) which I
> have a nagging problem with:
>
>
> I have this nice and useful button right next to the touchpad, for
> disabling it (when working with mouse and using the keyboard and prefer
> not having pointer distracted by occasional touches on the touchpad
> while typing).
>
>
> The problem is that when I use it, all is gute and the touchpad is
> disabled but when I try to re-enable the touchpad its still disabled.
> This is fixed only after a shutdown of the system, or "suspend" of it.
>
>
> I failed to find any useful help on the web.
>
>
> When I run hal-device or lspci (-v) I find nothing like "touchpad" or
> "synaptic".
>
>
> Any tip?

man synclient

By the way, my acer toggles mousepad-on state every time you push it, so your 
situation is definitely not normal. I have a feeling the next Ubuntu will fix 
it, and maybe you can file a Ubuntu bug report to make sure of that fact.

HTH

SteveT